“Buy a poppy for Remembrance Day?”

I handed over the money and clipped the poppy on my jacket yet I needed no reminder. It was a day always important for my father, one he honoured in memory of his comrades who never returned, one he raised us to respect. He’d suffered the horrors of war and returned when many hadn’t.

The silence… I pause and think of him and others I had known.

He has long since joined his comrades, those remaining grown so few. Life goes on. The ranks have thinned yet they will live eternal in our memories.

Crazy George they called him. His strange ideas made him seem so, his latest just another example.

“There’s an Einstein-Rosen bridge* in the pond,” he claimed.

Everybody laughed. There wasn’t a bridge over the pond. That didn’t stop George. A few came to watch him jump headfirst into the pond. For a few minutes witnesses watched amused before pulling him out.

Taking a gasp of air, “Too small! Only my hand crossed. Proof!”

Over the next weeks, science journals reported discovery of a new species. Its DNA was unlike any on Earth. It was named xenophylum** Georgiensis after its discoverer.

This is the prompt photo from the 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups blog & is not my property,

* An Einstein-Rosen bridge is more commonly known as a wormhole. It is theoretically thought to be a “shortcut” through space-time.

** xenophylum – “xeno” from Greek meaning foreigner or stranger. “Phylum” in biological classification, it is one order below Kingdom. Xenophylum was used to represent an alien life form.